Jay-Z’s “Holy Grail” Music Video Is Like Citizen Kane with Justin Timberlake and Snakes

Jay-Z appears to be paying homage to the 1941 Orson Welles classic,Citizen Kane, in his new video for “Holy Grail,” which he debuted on Facebook earlier today. The video shows the rap artist all alone in a dark palatial estate pocked with bullet holes, candelabras, champagne towers, and roman statues. Sadly for him, maybe, he only has a depressing indoor pool, old boxing videos, and his own rapping to entertain him. As for friends? We suppose you could count the snakes slithering on his Scrooge McDuck–sized fortress of cash—metaphor!—or Justin Timberlake, who stops by to sing about his dirty laundry being in the streets.

Lyrics—which have been re-mixed by Jay-Z and director Anthony Mandler—suggest that the rapper is not lamenting the pitfalls of wealth per se but the solitude and self-destructive forces that fame brings. Case in point: “Bright lights is enticing but look what it did to Tyson.” There is also a Kurt Cobain shout-out, and a sample from Nirvana's “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

But if Jay-Z is our Charles Foster Kane, this bullet-torn mansion is his Xanadu, and Justin Timberlake is the trespassing next-door neighbor cut from the film because his scenes are kind of a bummer, what is Jay-Z's Rosebud in this “Holy Grail” video? Our money is on the giant flaming luxury sedan in Jay-Z's foyer—the one that Timberlake, curiously, is completely unconcerned with putting out—but, please, submit your best guesses below.